Featured essay
Nvidia and Megaspeed: who checks where the chips go?
Megaspeed, a Singapore cloud company with an untraceable owner, imported $4.6 billion of Nvidia hardware while US export rules treated a share register as proof of who…
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Power
Ukraine's Cyber Forces bill: who commands the hackers?Part 3 of 3
Ukraine encouraged volunteer hackers to join its fight against Russia. Four years on, parliament is weighing a military Cyber Force with a civilian reserve. The open question is who gives the orders for cyber…
Power
Silver Fox: China places 63 malware suspects under criminal compulsory measuresPart 2 of 3
China's Ministry of Public Security says it has put 63 people under criminal compulsory measures in five malware cases. Security vendors track Silver Fox as a threat actor that deploys ValleyRAT, but the ministry's…
Power
VasyGrek arrests: how Russia polices its own hackersPart 1 of 3
The VasyGrek case fits a pattern in which the line Russia draws around cybercrime runs through the victim, not the crime. A rare arrest of a group that hit Russian firms shows where tolerance may end, and how little…
Money
Binance hack: who decides when stolen crypto is frozen?
Stablecoin issuers froze about $3bn of the funds stolen from Binance within hours, according to Binance. Their freezing powers are written down. What outsiders cannot see is how those powers are applied, and who can…
Technology
Maven's AI agents: who is accountable when they fail?Part 3 of 3
Anthropic told courts it cannot alter Claude once it is inside a classified Pentagon system, and an appeals court has now ruled that how a laboratory trains its models can itself be a supply chain risk. Military AI…
Ethics
Human control of military AI: safeguard or weak point?Part 2 of 3
Human judgment is the main safeguard in US military AI, and the thing a fast, jammed battlefield wears away. Pentagon policy requires only appropriate human judgment, while Palantir says Maven cuts two weeks of staff…
The Camorra has gone digital. So has the state.
5 min readPalantir Maven after Claude: the swap, by Palantir's account
6 min readStarshield speed limit: why drones depend on satellite links
6 min readYandex strikes: did they cut Russian disinformation?
5 min readCockroach Janta Party: built online, tracked offline
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TechnologyHow the systems themselves work, and what their design choices make possible.MoneyWho pays for the buildout, who profits, and what that financing structure commits everyone to.InfrastructureThe physical systems underneath digital power — chips, power grids, cables, data centres.PowerWho actually holds authority once a system is built, and who is accountable when it fails.EthicsWhat is owed to the people a system acts on, and whether current practice meets it.InfluenceHow information, platforms and persuasion shape what people believe and how they act.LawHow laws, courts and enforcement govern digital systems, and where their reach ends.All tracks →